We're going on a Slug Hunt

[igenlode]

I took out a torch and caught a dozen or so smallish slugs roaming around my pots in the (very cold -- I thought they were cold-blooded? It's only a few degrees above freezing) dark. I imagine that explains what happened to my mesembryanthemums... and to another batch of slow-growing succulent-type seedlings that had just begun to take off after almost two months, when the most promising plant was eaten through last night at the stem and left with its plump leaves decapitated across the compost.

Unfortunately I wasn't equipped with any very effective means of dealing with them. I no longer have a sharp trowel to cut them in half, and while I normally condemn slugs to shrivel to death on the scorching hot tiles below my balcony, simply dropping them off (or even flicking them as far as possible) isn't necessarily going to stop them climbing back up in search of greenstuff. Perhaps I should have taken a bowl of boiling water with me. (I'm not prepared to waste that much salt...)

It was certainly too cold for bare feet. My toes are still burning with returning circulation.

Comments

[watervole]

Stab them with a veg knife. Salt's bad for your soil.

Or start your seedlings off on a windowsill?

I Must admit that most of my garden operates on the principle of growing flowers that slugs don't seem to eat. Luckily there are plenty of them.

[igenlode]

Well, I was thinking more in terms of putting them in a bucket and pouring salt on them there (very nasty but effective). But it makes the most disgusting mess, as well as being very wasteful of salt. And it certainly gives the impression of being a hideous death :-(

Theoretically it ought to be possible to eliminate slugs from a second-floor balcony altogether, as the nearest alternative habitat is a long way below and involves a lengthy migration over burning hot walls and tiles intervening. I think they came in with the soil in the pots -- I suspect some pansies that I bought from a garden centre last Spring.

Thanks to double-glazing I don't have any windowsills deep enough to balance anything larger than a yoghurt-pot on, although I do have a bathroom with a tiled shelf that doubles as a pantry in winter and a greenhouse in summer, according to sun direction!

[watervole]

My son's former computer desk is now a handy place for starting plants after he moved out leaving us with a spare bedroom.